“You don’t want to see me smile.”
“But I do. Ever since…” There was no point. His eyes had gone cold and stony again. I’d ruined everything.
And then something dislodged itself in my brain.
I thought about him showing up at my room for no reason.
I thought about the kissing.
And a realization lit up bright and blazing as the sun.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Kaol. You ain’t happy at all.”
He looked at me, pained, like he wanted to protest. But he didn’t.
“This isn’t you,” I said, and the words turned to panic in my throat. “This isn’t… you wouldn’t on your… the boon.”
Naji looked stricken. Confused. He didn’t deny anything.
I felt like I was spitting out poison. I shoved myself off the bed. Heat rose up hot and angry in my chest. “It’s the boon!” I shouted. “From the manticores!”
Kaol, why hadn’t I stopped him when he first came in? Why hadn’t I known?
“Ananna, no, you don’t understand.” His words shook. “The magic, it’s–”
“Shut up!” I drew my robe tight over my body – it had slipped off my shoulders before. “I can’t believe… I’m so sorry… I actually thought you wanted me–”
“I do.” Naji rubbed his head. He still looked confused. “I do want you–”
“Get out!” Part of me didn’t mean it. Part of me looked at Naji and thought about how he’d cared for me after I was shot, how he walked me around the gardens and stayed close to me even though I wasn’t in any danger. But I couldn’t run the risk of letting him hurt me. Not again.
“Get out of my room!” I shouted.
Naji stumbled out of the bed. He seemed drunk. The ahiial, I thought. They stuck something in his wine.
What you want most in the world. The manticore must’ve thought it was Naji.
“This isn’t how I wanted things to happen,” Naji said, still watching me with that pained, befuddled expression.
“It ain’t how I wanted ’em to happen neither!” I yanked my sword out from its hiding place under the bed and brandished it at him. I couldn’t decide if I was angry at him or at the manticores or at myself. “So get out now.”
He stared at the sword and looked sad. “I do want you,” he said.
Blood rushed in my ears. I remembered us standing in the sunlight of the garden, his hand on my arm, the scent of flowers heavy on the wind. I remember him looking at me, flush with happiness.
Naji turned and walked out the door.
I couldn’t sleep. The bed smelled like Naji.
I left my room and followed the hallway through the servants’ quarters, one hand trailing along the powdery walls, dust kicking up behind my feet. The quarters were silent and still, but the air was stuffy out in the hallways. No windows. So I went outside and sat down underneath a palm tree, leaning up against the trunk.
The desert swirled around me, cold and sad with the night-time.
I wasn’t going to cry, and I wasn’t going to remember.
“What are you doing awake?”
It was Marjani. She came walking from the direction of the desert, her robes stained with dirt at the hem.
“Where the hell were you?”
“Thinking.” She folded her arms in front of her chest. “You look like you had too much ahiial.”
“I left when you did,” I muttered.
“I know.” She sat down beside me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
She folded her legs up against her chest and tucked her chin on her knees. “You got that boon yet?”
Kaol, she had to ask that, didn’t she? I spat in the dirt.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Take it as a yes.” I glared off into the darkness. “And I don’t want to talk about it so don’t ask.”
Marjani blinked at me and then lay her cheek against the top of her knees. We sat in the dusty quiet until I couldn’t stand the sound of silence no more.
“When we leaving?” I asked.
Marjani lifted her head. “Tomorrow, I imagine. Later, though. After the crew’ve all slept off their hangovers.”
“We got a course laid out yet?”
Marjani hesitated. I peered at her, wondering what she was keeping from me. The mystery kept my mind off other things.
“We aren’t going to Lisirra,” she finally said.
“What? Why?” I dropped my head against the palm tree. “Another damn delay? Marjani, you’ve no idea how much I want to get rid of Naj… of the curse.”
Marjani gave me a weird look, but all she said was, “We’re going to Jokja. I know of starstones there.”
“You didn’t think that might’ve been important to mention before?” But then I remembered seeing that brooch stuck in the map at Arkuz. It hadn’t registered at the time, but– “Kaol, how long have you been planning this?”
“Since Bone Island.” Marjani’s expression didn’t change. “I shouldn’t have kept it from you, but – I had my reasons.”
I glared at her.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to… go back.”
Something about her voice softened me. “Is it dangerous for you?”
“Probably not,” she said softly. “The king died three weeks ago. I received word when we were on Bone Island.”
“The king? You got banished on orders of the king?”
“The king had a… personal connection to the affair.”
It took me a few minutes to realize what she was saying.
“You tried to court the Jokja princess?”
Marjani blinked at me a few times, eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. Then she laughed. “I never thought about it that way before.”
“But it’s what you did! Merciful sea, Marjani, that’s a hell of–” I stopped. “Wait, so she’s the queen now? Your, ah, your friend? That’s how it works in Jokja, yeah?”
“Yes.”
“She ever pick a suitor?”
Marjani shook her head.
“That’s the real reason you want to go back, ain’t it?”
Marjani looked away, out toward the desert. “Saida’s family has owned a pair of starstones for several generations. I remember hearing about them from the court storyteller. And the condition of the curse required a princess, if you recall…” She laughed, shook her head. “It’s really quite perfect.”
Almost as perfect as me falling in love with him cause of helping him find his cure.
I was back in that bedroom, Naji kissing me and touching me and looking at me all cause of some manticore sorcery–
“Ananna? Are you sure you’re alright?”
I scowled.
Marjani tilted her head in a way that reminded me of Mama, bending over to lay cool rags on my forehead whenever I had a fever. “It’s about the boon, isn’t it?”
“I told you I don’t want to talk about it!”
“It might help you, though.” Marjani eyes were wide and clear. “It helped me. Talking.”
I stared at her and didn’t say nothing.
“What did they give you, Ananna?” And her voice was soft like she was speaking to a child.
I hesitated.
“Ananna–”
“Naji!” I shouted. “They gave me Naji.”
That was met with silence, like I figured it would. Then Marjani said, “Not as a meal, I hope–”
“No.” The palm tree was leaking sap, sticky and cool against the skin of my back.
“Then wha… Oh.”
I didn’t say nothing.
“How’d they–”
“I don’t know!” I slammed my fist into the ground. “Poisoned him or something. Magic. I don’t know.”
“Manticores with love spells,” Marjani said. “Well, that’s awfully terrifying.”
“It ain’t funny.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.” She leaned forward, put one hand on my knee. “Sweetness, how do you know it was the boon?”
“Because there ain’t no way he could want me on his own!”
Marjani frowned.